


plan all your moves in advance

by theultimateburrito



Category: Evil Dead (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Experimental Style, Gen, Iterative Storytelling, Non-Linear Narrative, Trauma, Trick or Treat 2020, Trick or Treat: Trick, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:15:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27167788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theultimateburrito/pseuds/theultimateburrito
Summary: "If he really thinks about it, the problems all begin and end with the car."In which Ash Williams goes over the events at the cabin over and over again until he finds the truth.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 19
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	plan all your moves in advance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Missy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/gifts).



If he really thinks about it, the problems all begin and end with the car. But it was fine at the time, good enough to run ‘em all up the mountain. Ash made sure of it, walked right into the shop and stood next to the mechanic and watched every turn of the wrench. The car was fine because he made sure it was.

He watched from the ground, the Oldsmobile up on risers. 

“And the brakes are up to spec?” Ash called up.

(Did his voice shake then? He can’t remember. He’ll say it was level, certain of itself.) 

After a minute, the mechanic groaned, “You bet, kid.” 

“How are the axles? The alignment, huh?” 

“For your money,” The mechanic glanced back at him. Raised his eyebrows, challenging. “It’ll run like a dream.” 

“Now listen--” 

“No, you listen to _me_ , bud-- If you think you know more than me, you take this wrench and start turnin’ or I’ll show you where you can shove it.” 

Ash set his jaw, tried to look as serious as he could manage. He could see Cheryl out of the corner of his eye, legs pulled up to her chest for a makeshift easel, smirking up a storm while she sketched. She’d always been good like that, decent enough to wait and make fun of him later instead of laughing in his face right away.

When ‘later’ came, she started easy. 

“I’ve never seen you get so riled up, Ashley,” Cheryl said as she slipped into the passenger seat.

“Yeah, well, let’s see how riled up I can get,” Ash muttered while he shook the keys out of his pocket.

Ash started up the car and, oh, listen to that baby purr. The low rumble of a classic, just like new. Relief settled onto his shoulders and he could feel himself unwinding with every second the sound continued. 

A grin wormed its way onto his face and he turned toward Cheryl with great satisfaction, “Guess we’ll never know.” 

“Crisis averted,” she said, rolling her eyes 

(brown, like his) 

back down to look at her sketchbook. 

He can’t remember what she was drawing then-- why can’t he remember that? The memory smudges like soft charcoal being rubbed across paper. Ash can see the smear, that’s it, just the smear.

He looks down at his fingers, blood under the fingernails (nearly bent back but he doesn’t remember it hurting so bad), tipped with smoke and soot from clawing his way to the fireplace. He rubs his fingers together and thinks of pencil lead, 

( _of a yellow number 2 digging into Linda’s ankle like tearing through paper_ )

of that drive away from the mechanic’s with Cheryl. 

But the memory slams on the brakes. Stalls. 

He can’t manage to get the engine to turn over. Night pushed any memory of daylight out of the car (but time passes differently in the mountains) and Cheryl is in the passenger seat like before, yes, but this looks different. She’s covered with dirt and leaves, at a point of mania well past crying. 

“It’s not going to let us leave,” She said, so certainly. 

But that doesn’t make sense. The car ran like a dream, it was just fine.

Ash has a practical brain, hard-wired to shoot from cause directly into effect. Put one piece here and another there, everything works. If the Oldsmobile was working, then it stands to reason that everything thereafter should have worked too, all down the line. It was his one job this trip, to assure this, and he did. If Ash’s part was done right then, well, it should all work.

He pressed a cross-- made out of branches taken from the forest that hates them, that killed them-- into the ground with the heel of his boot. Ash stood up tall and straight and surveyed his makeshift grave. 

This doesn’t look like ‘working’.

Where (when) did he go wrong?

Ash puts the memory in reverse, looks at the moments like mile-markers, dots along the highway. He presses his fingertip to a spot in time, right on the Tennessee border and says,

“That’d put us right… about…. here--” 

The steering wheel jerked from Scotty’s hand, everyone had screamed. Couldn’t have been Scotty’s fault, even if Ash did have a moment of doubt. All the times he’d driven Ash home are proof enough that he had always steered them right. But it couldn’t have been the car either. Ash remembered clearly, having stood in the garage, looked up at the mechanic and said,

“And the brakes are up to spec?”

The mechanic assured him, yes, of course.

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

“Well check the axles out, too. Wheel’s been acting up lately-- give it a look while you’re down there, would ya?” 

“You got it, boss.”

He remembers that much-- plain as day! 

That’s right, it did run. Right when Cheryl was ready to throw in the towel was when the engine finally turned over. Ash looked over at her, quiet, as if to say, ‘ _See? That’s what happens when you don’t give up_.’ before he pulled into reverse.

"We're _not_ gonna die," he said to Scotty. The fire flickered against the sweat on his brow. "We're gonna get out of here." 

( _"You, me, Shelley... Well--"_ ) 

Everything should have worked out after that. He did his part! 

It was the bridge, really, the fucking bridge that was the problem-- because the car was fine. Those headlights are proof of it. They’re all Ash can see when he thinks of it, direct and blinding, illuminating their only escape. Which was gone by then, he guessed, with the fucking thing all curled up into itself like a dead spider.

He could scream. He won’t.

Ash looked right at the headlights of the Oldsmobile while he held Cheryl, who writhed and sobbed into his chest. It hurt but he looked right at them, saw how well they worked. It stirred something visceral in him, the way brightness burned, how his certainty stung so tangibly at the back of his nose like

the smell of blood as it seeped into the cellar lightbulb, drip by drip, until it coated the whole room in red light. Consumed the space, ate it whole. Though it’s not the color that overwhelmed him so much as the smell, the way the blood curdled and cooked on the bulb. To watch it all spill over, see it fill and fill until it shattered, it was just like he felt

as he looked at the white light of the headlights, cast perfectly out into the darkness. Felt like something about to boil over. 

They work. It _works_. 

Ash looked down and met Cheryl’s eyes

( _white, bloodshot, like theirs_ )

**“For God’s Sake what happened to her eyes?”**

(brown, like his-- always were)

that were frantic, wobbling.

She closed her eyes and pounded at his chest while she screamed, “It’s not going to let us leave, Ashley, It’s not going to--”

“let us leave, Ash,” Scotty coughed wetly. His voice was usually so certain of itself but it warbled, then. Too much blood to talk through. 

But he knows that’s not true, it’s not. There’s always a way. 

When one door closes

(Ash opens the door to the next room, running all the way, but it follows him and he ducks into the crawlspace between the walls, but it’s not enough, so he runs and he runs to close the next door and)

another door opens. 

“C’mon, Scotty, there’s gotta be another way,” Ash said, hands hovering just short of his face. 

“It won’t let us,” Scotty said again, like a nail in a coffin. 

No, that wasn’t what he said. It couldn’t have been-- Scotty’s never quit a day in his life. He was always there to pick Ash up on a hard night, be there when he needed someone most, when he needed some 

(honesty. “She’s _dead_ , Ash.”)

sense shaken into him. There’s always a way.

That’s right. It was Scotty that said, “No, wait… There’s a trail.”

The map is still folded, tucked into the backseat of the car. He can already see the red sharpie lining the highway that twines through the mountains right to the cabin, Ash charted it himself-- the perfect course up. If he did it once he can do it again. 

There’s always a way, always a cause to an effect. 

Ash considered the logistics of it when he went to get Scotty a glass of water from the kitchen

(that he never drank, never _would_ drink)

and the water was still runnin’ at least-- a little off-color but Scotty was never picky. It’d be tough to get the Oldsmobile through the unpaved mountain terrain but that shouldn’t be too much of a problem. He had the axles looked at just yesterday, they’re up to spec.

He’s in the kitchen again

( _after he shoved his thumbs into Scotty’s eyes_ )

later on.

Ash looks down at the water in the sink that runs down the drain in this god-awful reddish near-black mixture. Ash tries to scrub it off with the shreds of his nails that remain but he’s shaking too much. It’s after noon, though. Mountain air can’t be that cold by now.

He looks up through the window to confirm, but it’s nothing but dark.

Maybe it’s all the running, then. That’s gotta be it-- jittery muscles.

So he puts on a jacket when he goes out to the car, to that one piece of certainty in this goddamn place. It’s morning, somehow (time passes differently in the mountains), so the dissonance probably throws him a little off kilter-- explains why he’s limping a little

( _Linda, clawing at his leg, shredding it to pieces_ )

all the way to the car. The keys jingle in his hands even though he’s holding them steady. The sound stops the moment he realizes its source, like it was all just a matter of willpower-- just a matter of digging the jagged edge into his palm and saying “no”.

Ash unlocks the door and takes a seat. Sits there for a little while, thinking about the bridge behind, (the headlights were too bright to really tell if it was out) and the dirt mountain road ahead. None of that should be a problem, though. Holding his breath, Ash puts the key in the ignition and turns. The motor revs and settles, easing into a steady rumble. And a piece of him settles, eases, with the satisfaction of everything running as it should.

“ _See_?” Ash mutters to himself. He slings an arm over the seat beside him, glancing over his shoulder and pulling into reverse. “What’d I tell ya?”

Should be no trouble now. The car runs like a dream.

**Author's Note:**

> i've been watching a horror movie a day for the month of october, so i was ecstatic to see "evil dead" on my giftee's list! i have a lot of feelings about reading it as a trauma narrative, with all the nonlinear time and iterative storytelling going on in the first half of evil dead 2 in particular. ash is a character i've grown to feel really dearly toward and i feel like i've watched the movie with new eyes lately!! 
> 
> special and heartfelt thanks to queenieofaces for beta and guidance, i'm always appreciative of my friend and confidant in nonlinear time.
> 
> i only have knowledge of the trilogy and haven't seen the series, so i hope this is satisfying (and mildly coherent) to a big fan!! enjoy!!


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